Bronze Summer

31

The next day they got their first glimpse of the Anatolian shore. It was a thin brown stripe on the horizon, with low, worn hills, and long empty beaches against which waves broke in a skim of white, and not a splash of green anywhere. This was home for Qirum. He showed no pleasure in returning.

They turned, heading north, so they tracked the coast to their east, Milaqa’s left. The rowing got harder. There was a current against them, and a wind blew steadily from the north. Milaqa and the rest laboured, but the landmarks on the shore seemed to crawl by. At last, on the northern horizon, Kilushepa pointed out a smudge of brown hanging over the land: smoke from the fires of Troy itself.

‘There’s a bay,’ Qirum said, panting as he worked his oar. ‘A headland… Once we round the headland and get into the bay we’ll be out of this current, sheltered from the wind, and life will get a lot easier. Not long now, I promise-’

‘ Weapons! ’ Kilushepa’s command was a harsh snap.

Milaqa looked up, confused. The men were already shipping their oars and scrambling for their spears and shields under their benches. Qirum looked over his shoulder, past Milaqa, and he swore, using his filthiest defamation of his Storm God.

And Milaqa looked back, along the length of the boat to the sea. There it was: a black scrap on the horizon that grew as she watched, a square of dark sail above a slim hull.

Qirum began barking instructions. ‘Get ready. Use any weapons you have to hand. You too, ladies! I feared they would strike here, where every boat must round the headland to the bay. And see how they come upon us, riding down the summer winds as we labour against them, they have all the advantages. Of course anticipating trouble doesn’t necessarily mean you can avoid it. They’ll come alongside us, grapple us with hooks and ropes, maybe throw a net. Cut their ropes, slash their net. Don’t let them board! Or you will be rowing another boat across a river of blood before the day is done.’

They quickly got organised, the men with their weapons and shields ready to defend either side of the boat, depending on how the pirates came down on them. Milaqa had no weapons of her own save her bronze dagger. She picked up her oar, and held it before her like a club. Teel looked terrified, Deri and Riban grim. Tibo had an expression of relish. The black ship closed on them silent as smoke over the water. Milaqa could see detail now, rents in that big sail, a glint of metal — bronze swords and spear points.

None of this seemed real. The scene was almost peaceful, as they waited; the sea lapped, the wind sighed in their faces.

‘They’re closing fast,’ Deri said grimly. ‘They’ll pass by fast too. If they judge it wrong they’ll miss us altogether.’

Qirum said, ‘They’re good seamen. Must be, or they wouldn’t have survived. They might foul up. We won’t gamble our lives on it. She’s a big one. A fifty-seater. If she’s fully manned we’re outnumbered many times over.’

‘This is not how it ends for you, Trojan,’ Kilushepa said calmly. ‘You, killed by a stranger for the scrap of food in your pack, the bit of gold in your pocket? You, who is destined to rule the world? You will survive this. So it’s a fifty-seater. What’s your plan?’

He stared at her. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Gods, I am surrounded by monstrous women! But you are right, of course. We must not allow them close enough to use their advantage of numbers.’ He rummaged under his bench for his bow and a leather quiver of arrows. ‘Milaqa. Get me the lantern from Kilushepa at the stern.’ Feverishly he used his knife to saw a bit of cloth from his tunic, and tied it around an arrowhead. ‘Move, girl!’

She worked her away along the boat, between the watchful men, and fetched the lantern. She had to shield it from the wind with her body as Qirum struck a flint to light it. ‘Feed it,’ he snapped at the man behind Milaqa’s bench, the Greek. The man ripped bits of cloth off his own tunic to fuel the flames.

The pirate ship was closing now. Some of its crew dug oars in the water to slow the ship as it bore down. Milaqa thought she heard them chant, a rapid, ugly noise; they were pumped up to fight.

‘Milaqa.’ Qirum dipped one arrowhead, wrapped in cloth, into the flame; it came up burning. ‘Help me. I’ll fire the arrows. And when they close, throw the lamp. Try to hit the sail. Do you understand? You’ll only get one chance.’

She picked up the lamp; it was a clay jug heavy with oil. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Good, because-’

Because they were here.

The pirate was another Greek boat, Milaqa saw, a sleek black hull with savage painted eyes. The hull itself was battered and showed signs of patching, a hardened fighting ship. And as Qirum had predicted it was about twice the length of theirs, and seemed to swarm with men.

The ropes started flying over, weighted with stones, with hooks of sharpened bone. Qirum’s crew hacked at the ropes with their axes and blades. The pirates hauled with relish, laughing. Milaqa saw they were preparing to throw a weighted net over the boat, which would trap them all. One man looked directly at her. He wore a skull plate nailed to his shaven head, and his face was crowded with tattoos. He opened his mouth to reveal sharpened teeth, and a tongue that had been cleft like a snake’s. He barely looked human at all. She clenched her oar, recoiling, shocked, suddenly flooded with fear. She was nothing to this man, she saw, her own self worthless. To him she was a scrap of flesh to be robbed, used and discarded — and then forgotten, no doubt, before the night fell. What god would make a universe where such a horror could be inflicted on her?

But he hadn’t got her yet.

Qirum fired off a flaming arrow — but it missed, and sailed harmlessly into the sea, where its flame died. He fired another and hit a man in the chest; he screamed and fell backward into the sea. A third thunked into the pirate’s hull. And now, as the enemy ship closed, Qirum cried, ‘Milaqa!’

For an instant she could not move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tattooed man, who grinned, and beckoned to her, an obscene gesture. Qirum called again.

With all her strength Milaqa hurled her lantern.

It smashed against the base of the pirate’s mast, and flame blossomed. The men scrambled away from the sudden fire, trying to douse it using seawater scooped up with bilge buckets. The rowers managed to cut the last of the ropes, and the pirate ship drifted away, and Qirum loosed off more arrows, picking off the men. Tibo whooped, and hurled his spear uselessly after the pirate vessel.

‘Now row!’ Qirum shouted. ‘Let’s put some distance between us! Take your oars!’

The oarsmen, including Milaqa and Qirum, quickly settled. Soon they were in the familiar rhythm, chanting together now, a triumphant, ‘One — pull! One — pull!’ Milaqa, looking out over the stern as she rowed, saw the blazing pirate ship recede into the distance. The crew, abandoning their attempt to save the ship, leapt into the water.

‘The gods spared us,’ muttered Qirum as he rowed. ‘If you had failed with your throw, Milaqa, even by a hand’s breadth — and there’s a great deal of luck involved in lobbing from one moving ship into another — we would all be dying, spilling our blood into the water by now. They toy with us, the gods, our little lives and deaths amuse them…’

Kilushepa put away her own knife. Throughout the incident she had not moved from her bench at the stern, as expressionless as if nothing important had happened at all.

But Milaqa gave way to a deep shuddering. She couldn’t get the image of the tattooed face out of her mind, that cleft tongue. He had come so close. She longed to be somewhere safe, to have the stout bulk of the Wall around her.

The kindly Greek behind her put his hand on her shoulder, squeezed.